Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: vinemaplebows on November 25, 2013, 03:30:47 pm
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Did you ever notice how many bow woods are either medicinal, or have thorns?? I have been thinking about this, and find it quite ironic. Both life, and death in many species we take for granite in our hobby. Just a thought.
VMB
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Its a love/hate relationship for sure Brian.
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Definitely cool to think about. Also, have you ever noticed how many of the better bow woods have higher BTU ratings than other woods? Kind of a side benefit to building bows is you usually end up with some hot burning wood in the shed.
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Poison Sumac make a good arrow shaft??? :-\ >:D >:( If you don't kill'em, you'll make'm wish they was dead!
OneBow
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I have noticed that too Brian. The methodological naturalist in me wants to say, "well, maybe there is just a lot of trees that are medicinal or have thorns, and we just notice our bow trees and overlook the others". But the mystic bowyer in me says, maybe there is something to the idea of bows being feminine in spirit (what, you didn't know bows have spirits? ;D). Clearly the bow has very feminine attributes, whereas the arrow is clearly male (A widespread belief of "primitive" cultures). So logically the trees that bow wood comes from would be of the female spirit too, right? So that explains why bow wood trees have the power to heal and the power to poison, why they hold great treasures of beauty but are wrapped in snarly thorns, why they always want to go out, but can't ever seem to get the dishes done... :P
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+1 Carson well said. The phenomenon is definitely rooted in the spirit. From an evolutionary standpoint it also seems that the climates that originally mutated/fostered certain types of trees was a factor. Conifers survive in these PNW climates because of our year round amounts of moisture, temperatures, soils. Most conifers don't make suitable bows, except a few that have adapted to grow slowly like Yew, or stand up to the winds and storms have developed mechanisms to add extra meat to their leeward side making compression or tension wood. It's amazing what goes into a bow from seed to shot. A lot of the trees we make bows from were older than our fathers or grandfathers. I remember reading a rad article in an old primitive archer about the belief that the bow was the moon, cradle and sustained life.
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Deep,real deep. ;) :)
Pappy
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I was trying to put up a picture of Keanue Reeves from bill and teds excellent adventure saying "Whoooooooa man"...would have been funnier than writing it out.
Seriously though Ive used mostly white woods and I think medicinal is a broad term a lot of trees fall under. Maybe thats how woods were first discovered, an ancient human gathering medicine decides they want a bow of good medicine too. Also if a wood (lets say osage) has medicinal properties it has chemical compounds in the wood as well as the leaves and fruit, and the wood is usually oily. does this transfer to the wood being dense an hard as well? I have sassafras that has tight growth rings but is lighter than popcorn right of the stump, yet seems to be an oily wood that was used medicinally. I am no historian or scientist and I have never studied ancient peoples academically so let me know if I am completely wrong!
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Hold on guys....lemme go hit the pipe so I can enter into this conversation 8)
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Hold on guys....lemme go hit the pipe so I can enter into this conversation 8)
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Lol that's pretty good. Didn't see that till now. Needed that this morning. ;D
Matt
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Hold on guys....lemme go hit the pipe so I can enter into this conversation 8)
Now that was Phunny...
:)
-gus
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I lost my ability to look at trees for their beauty and "spirituality" when I started making bows.... Now all I see is bow wood and not bow wood. :(
There are exceptions, off the top of my head aspirin is derived from willow which is a rubbish bow wood.
Yew has been called the tree of life and whilst there is ongoing research into taxol i think it comes from the fact that it looks almost flesh like when the bark is ripped down to heart wood. A lot of old herbal medicines are based on what certain parts of certain plants look like. Certain tubers of plants were prescribed for piles because they looked like errr farmers.
I would imagine BTU has a relation to density which has a relation to good bow wood.
Am i taking all of the fun out of this? Will get my coat.
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Dwardo, that reminds me of a bit I came across on the internet once referring to what you are describing as the "doctrine of signs". It pointed out that the three arguably best bow woods, yew, osage, and ipe, all held medicines that treat female reproductive cancers. Citing the belief that bows are feminine, this fit with the doctrine of signs.
Hey, where did Blackhawk go?...must of got sidetracked. ;D
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Hold on guys....lemme go hit the pipe so I can enter into this conversation 8)
Ha ha that made me laugh out loud...still laughing !! ;D
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A tree that produces nuts or fruit
will make a bow that is good to shoot.
Or is it,
A bow that is good to shot is produced by a nut or fruit?
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I swear, I debarked some buckthorn this year and every time I did I took a big crap. HMMM...could have been the bark?
Never would have thought of that before making bows. I think it's cool the things we learn we wouldn't have if not for bow making.
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http://www.thegoddesstree.com/trees/Hawthorn.htm
I just found a beauty of of a hawthorn tree; I can probably cut at least a 60 inch chunk out of it, 4 inches diameter. Pretty rare around here. Better leave an offering tothe little people before I cut it though.......
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A tree that produces nuts or fruit
will make a bow that is good to shoot.
Or is it,
A bow that is good to shot is produced by a nut or fruit?
Definitely the last statement!!!
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;D
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It is with enough butter >:D
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Yes! Yes it is! ;D
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One thing I have always thought about is the nature (or rather tendency) of osage orange and english yew to be knotty and twisted sometimes. I know not every osage tree is like that, and I only know what I hear about english yew, but it seems like it is not uncommon to hear accounts of both trees being knotty and twisted, etc. As well as osage and black locust both being ripe with thorns. What I am getting at, is I have thought a couple times if maybe man has been using these woods so much over time, whether for bow wood, or other purposes, that these woods have evolved through natural selection to be twisted and knotty and thorny, etc. Think about it, if there was a type of osage orange growing back in the day that had a tendency to grow perfectly straight with no twist or knots, it would be the first to get turned into a bow, or war club, or anything else for that matter. Although I know osage will typically just sprout shoots after being cut and grow right back, so this might just be a bunch of bs.
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One thing I have always thought about is the nature (or rather tendency) of osage orange and english yew to be knotty and twisted sometimes. I know not every osage tree is like that, and I only know what I hear about english yew, but it seems like it is not uncommon to hear accounts of both trees being knotty and twisted, etc. As well as osage and black locust both being ripe with thorns. What I am getting at, is I have thought a couple times if maybe man has been using these woods so much over time, whether for bow wood, or other purposes, that these woods have evolved through natural selection to be twisted and knotty and thorny, etc. Think about it, if there was a type of osage orange growing back in the day that had a tendency to grow perfectly straight with no twist or knots, it would be the first to get turned into a bow, or war club, or anything else for that matter. Although I know osage will typically just sprout shoots after being cut and grow right back, so this might just be a bunch of bs.
Darn smart trees, eh! Who'd a thunk trees would be a smart as all the other creatures that decided to change because conditions changed. Just goes to show, we shouldn't take so much for "granite" as vinemaplebows said in the first post. That was a pretty igneous comment actually. Wonder if he meant we shouldn't take things for shale, or limestone, or another igneous possibility, obsidian...
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Oh nutz. I just realized my post didn't have near the cleveritude I thought it did. Granite isn't the least bit igneous. It's conglomerate... That actually seems to be appropriate for this thread.
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Well, it went a bit deeper in thought than I was thinking, BUT.... It would seem to come from the femenine side. We first look, then we stare, we then decide if she would make a good date, then we try to shape her into what we feel is sexy...(you know how that works out at times ::)) We stroke her, bend her against her will, and last we finish her as beatifully as possible.....she then becomes our date for the hunt of a lifetime.....and she hates it when we look at others in the forest.....(picture a slap to the back of your head ::)) as we check others out.
We really hate it when she breaks up with us. :embarassed:.....be very, very carefull at full draw she is not far from giving you the shaft......yep tons in common with women! :laugh:
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One thing I have always thought about is the nature (or rather tendency) of osage orange and english yew to be knotty and twisted sometimes. I know not every osage tree is like that, and I only know what I hear about english yew, but it seems like it is not uncommon to hear accounts of both trees being knotty and twisted, etc. As well as osage and black locust both being ripe with thorns. What I am getting at, is I have thought a couple times if maybe man has been using these woods so much over time, whether for bow wood, or other purposes, that these woods have evolved through natural selection to be twisted and knotty and thorny, etc. Think about it, if there was a type of osage orange growing back in the day that had a tendency to grow perfectly straight with no twist or knots, it would be the first to get turned into a bow, or war club, or anything else for that matter. Although I know osage will typically just sprout shoots after being cut and grow right back, so this might just be a bunch of bs.
I have wondered that same thing tmk. "Survival of the twistedest" ;D
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Black hawk pass the pipe around. Wow! This is some good $h!+ man :)
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Black hawk pass the pipe around. Wow! This is some good $h!+ man :)
I had to switch to peyote...that pipe wasn't doing it for me.
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I love blackthorn (prunus spinosa) for bows, really has all you can ask from bowwood. But even though the thorns look harmless, not even real thorns, just pointy twigs, I get badly scratched each time I'm snatching one out of the hedges. And the worst is, these scratches heal very slowly :'( To me that has really become a part of what it is as a bowwood.
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Yew has been called the tree of life and whilst there is ongoing research into taxol i think it comes from the fact that it looks almost flesh like when the bark is ripped down to heart wood.
Well, the Yew tree probably got it's tree of life title from the multiple uses it bore as well as it being Yggdrasil, the tree Odin hung himself form for nine days to receive the gift of runes, the ability to communicate through time, really. The word yggdrasil can be traced to be derived from the word for yew and the word for pillar, holding up heaven form the earth. We do know it was carried from the gaels to Egypt as a gift, possibly by druidic cultures, and is possibly the basis for the word Jew (yew/jew) as it was a holy tree in Egypt along the Nile and ther ewere many jews in high royalty in the Egyptian courts, often being holy men and magicians.
We are often taught to ignore pagan or heathen traditions as being somewhat Luciferian or replete of any real life meaning, but truth s, there is rarely a spiritual practice in earth based cultures that is not based on real life survival and thriving from the land. The term "medicine bow" is one that is roughly translatable in nearly any culture that is shamanistic.
Am I a nerd?
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Yep! :)
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Every tree is likely medicinal to some degree.
The interesting thing about Osage is that it appears to have actually been fading away before its revival as a hedgerow tree.
The theory is that its seeds are ideally dispersed by being eaten by a large herbivore, which went extinct. Either the Giant Ground sloth or the Mammoth/Mastodon. Perhaps the thorns are to minimize the chances of being pushed over by a huge animal.
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I can picture this conversation happening a few 1000 years ago as the ancients gathered around the campfire to discuss their day.
"So, Harry, whaddjya do today?"
"Well, I was cutting some birch for bow wood when I got a really bad headache."
"Did you stop?"
"No, the darndest thing started happening. I just grabbed some bark and started chewing it and my headache went away!"
"No way!"
"Ya way!"
Jawge
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Every tree is likely medicinal to some degree.
The interesting thing about Osage is that it appears to have actually been fading away before its revival as a hedgerow tree.
The theory is that its seeds are ideally dispersed by being eaten by a large herbivore, which went extinct. Either the Giant Ground sloth or the Mammoth/Mastodon. Perhaps the thorns are to minimize the chances of being pushed over by a huge animal.
I'm guessing cattle became the new large herbivores.
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The way I see it is this... We try to answer age old questions with new thinking because that's how we were taught. These ends up leading to dead ends and or arguments. Things back then were being freshly answered by simple experience. They didn't sit around and debate what meant what and why. They knew that such and such wood was great for bows and if they were sacrificing that tree they better find plenty of use for it. They did find these uses and they explained it in their own way with spirits and such. The world takes on the image of what we imagine.
This probably doesn't make as much sense as I hoped it would but oh well.
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I think PatM nailed it. Seems many plants have some type of medicinal quality of some type. We simply conjure up the image of something mystical about certain plants we find interesting in some way. Ancient practice for sure. I know that's not as sexy or as interesting, but there are plain ole ordinary looking plants with special qualities as well. I find wonder in all of it, the bizarre and the mundane.
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I'm guessing cattle became the new large herbivores.
Hard to say what is actually still eating them. Some claim horses will if given the chance and the rapid spread of Osage after horses were re-introduced may have something to do with that but one definite reason is that people nurtured the species by helping it establish itself as a fencerow tree.
It's kind of interesting that the Indians didn't seem to try planting it in areas well outside where they had to travel to get it since it will grow over a huge range if allowed.
The practice of planting stuff where it is needed was well known for trees with other uses.
The most remarkable example I have seen is a park comprised of pure Hackberry in Carleton Place, Ontario. Hackberry is probably nearly unheard of in Ontario except in the extreme southwest. Carleton Place is considerably off that area.
The theory is that the trees were established by Indians portaging at that point on the river as a source of anti-inflammatories.
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<snip>
This probably doesn't make as much sense as I hoped it would but oh well.
If I had a nickel for everytime I said that after writing something I had intended to be clever, ...well I'd have a whole bunch of nickels!
OneBow
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The way I see it is this... We try to answer age old questions with new thinking because that's how we were taught. These ends up leading to dead ends and or arguments. Things back then were being freshly answered by simple experience. They didn't sit around and debate what meant what and why. They knew that such and such wood was great for bows and if they were sacrificing that tree they better find plenty of use for it. They did find these uses and they explained it in their own way with spirits and such. The world takes on the image of what we imagine.
This probably doesn't make as much sense as I hoped it would but oh well.
Makes wonderful sense! That said, the mystic is fun and an interesting way to distinguish cultures amidst a starbucks world.
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<snip>
This probably doesn't make as much sense as I hoped it would but oh well.
If I had a nickel for everytime I said that after writing something I had intended to be clever, ...well I'd have a whole bunch of nickels!
OneBow
+1
Can't tell y'all how many Witty Retorts or seemingly Sage Advice I have written in the Heat of The Moment... Then upon review decided it sounded all wrong and deleted it or at least rewritten it completely.
In Life, not just on PA.
There was a time when I'd press the Send Button before I could change my mind.
Perhaps this is Wisedom rearing it's grizzled head...
:)
-gus